"Disguise" - these guys are worth seeing!

"Disguise", Manchester Art Gallery, 12 February - 6 June 2004

R. Eric Swanepoel (http://www.hometown.aol.co.uk/computerager)

Entitled "Disguise", this ambitious exhibition is paradoxically
revealing. The human species has always adorned itself, to mark - or
feign - group membership, to advertise individual merit and to conceal
shortcomings. What would happen if you commanded ten of the better
artists/creative partnerships of the last century to explore these
themes? This is, in effect, what has been done, and the eclectic,
amusing and disturbing result is a touching essay on the importance and
the fragility of the identities many of us cling to or are compelled to
adopt.

Claude Cahun lived disguise in more ways than one. A lesbian artist and
intellectual moving in Surrealist circles in Paris, she enjoyed
creating sexually ambiguous images of herself in striking poses and
attire but had cause to employ her chameleon talents for real in
German-occupied Jersey. Eschewing costume, Kenny Macleod uses words to
fabricate contradictory but equally plausible personae for the video
camera. Should we take people's identity on trust?

Could it be that the further we move from "normal" guise and behaviour,
the more we reveal of who we "really" are? This might be argued from
Fergus Greer's photographs of Leigh Bowery in his flamboyant (and often
gender-crossing) costumes. He apparently exploited their "liberating"
effect to behave outrageously and so revealed his inner nature. Marcus
Coates takes things further, by traversing the species barrier. For one
of his hilarious videos, he asked people to warble along with
slowed-down birdsong. When the video of their performances was played
back at speed, not only were their avian impressions convincing in both
sound and twitchy manner (and you can judge this), but their friends
opined that the essence of their personalities had been
distilled.

Laura Ford's work is equally removed from normality, in that she works
with stuffed and featureless fabric sculptures invariably portraying
children in disconcerting roles and situations. The little girl waiting
in ambush with pistols drawn is funny, poignant and unsettling in equal
measure, and raises the question: what elements of our identity go
together? Funny and unsettling too are Inge Morath's photographs of
Saul Steinberg's paperbag masks. Each mask bears a caricatured face and
is worn by someone in the attitude and surroundings appropriate to the
New York high-society stereotype being targeted. In effect, the few
lines on paper summarise an entire character, with all its external
accoutrements and concomitant internal prejudices. One can't help but
laugh at the vanity and pettiness portrayed.

Entirely different but complementary pieces are Gillian Wearing's video
and Yasumasa Morimura's large reworking of an Edward Burne-Jones
painting. In the former, people wear masks and confess to a camera what
they cannot normally reveal about themselves and their experiences. In
the latter, Morimura puts his own face into "The Golden Stairs" and in
the resulting image - "Angels Descending the Stairs" - numerous female
Caucasian angels all bear his recognisably male and Asian visage.
Perhaps both these artists are saying that, try as we might, we can't
change who we are and must live with it?

"Disguise" implies deliberate deception, and Cindy Sherman's portrayals
of metaphorical mutton clumsily dressed as lamb are a squirmingly
accurate illustration of failure in this respect, and so could be
categorised with Wearing and Morimura's work. By contrast, Nikki S.
Lee, a female Korean version of Woody Allen's "Zelig", appears to adopt
wholesale the appearance, mindset and lifestyle of the members of
various New York communities - Hispanics, skateboarders, lesbians,
Yuppies and "the old" (!?), to name a few. This is a stunning riposte
to those whose work implies that identity is immutable. If identity can
be donned and shed as easily as she appears to do it, what does it say
about what it is to be human, and, ultimately, about war? Full marks to
her!

Sponsored by Mainstream and curated by Catherine Dickinson with the
help of a group of teenage "Creative Consultants", the exhibition will
be accompanied by a publication produced by these young people and will
have a "young and funky" feel to it. It will extend into the entrance
hall, caf?, restaurant and permanent display areas and will include a
special "Disguise lounge" in which to relax, find out more, and give
your opinion. "Disguise" has inspired art from Manchester schools and
National Children's Homes as part of Manchester City Galleries' "Image
and Identity" project.